[GX EXLUSIVE BETA] Retro Achievements Launcher

[Adultery]

RETRO ACHIEVEMENTS LAUNCHER

Current Version: 0.0.1 (BETA RELEASE)

The Retro Achievements Launcher is your all-in-one launcher for adding achievements to your favorite classic games. This utility can handle many aspects, including listing achievements and progress for each game supported by the RetroAchievements.org development team. This release is still in beta, for a list of upcoming features check out the list at the end of this post.

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Current features include:

• See all the supported games by system
  • Currently the launcher supports the following systems: NES, SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive, TG 16 - PC Engine, GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance
  • The app lists the games in the RA database, games without achievements attached show up as "Unavailable" in the game details pane
• Download, update, and install all systems supported by the RA community
  • Preesing the EMULATOR SETTINGS button launches the editor:
    
    
  • The INSTALL button will install the emulator into the path you specify
  • The UPDATE button downloads and installs the emulator in your current path
  • The CONFIGURE button launches the emulator without a ROM so you can make changes to the emulator
  • The WEB PAGE button takes you to the emulator's page on RetroAchievements.org
• Specify Launch Before/Launch After options
  • Adding an EXE and args to either of these will set up an application to launch at the time you specify
  • Supports BAT files
• Game Launching
  • Browse to the ROM you want to play and press LAUNCH. This will launch your game immediately.
• See your current score and rank
  • The bottom of the window shows your current score and overall rank on RetroAchievements.org

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Future development:

• Keymapper Support
  • Set up your profile options for Xpadder or Joy2Key
  • The keymapper app you select will launch and close with the emulator, using the profiles you specify
• RA User Search
  • Search for and see achievements and user data for a user you specify
• Zipped ROM Support
  • For emulators that don't accept zipped ROMs, the launcher handles the unzipping of your ROMs for you
  • Possible 7-zip support if I get around to it
• Core Launcher EXE
  • This will be a seperate project. Once I finish the UI, I will make an EXE that handles the launching in a command-line environment for full GameEx integration
  • The configuration will be read from the UI settings, and no user intervention will be necessary other than setting it up in GameEx -> CommandLine=RALauncherCore.exe -system 0 -rom "[RomPath]/[RomFile]"

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Notes:

As this is a BETA release, there may be some issues with it (although I haven't personally had any issues). If you do happen to hit a snag, please report it here.

This release uses a new DLL that I will release for future developers, that handles pretty much all the RA work in itself. You can get DataSets containing much of the data, and get the URLs for several RA features including download paths, forum topic paths, and emulator pages. This DLL also taps into the new Retro Achievements Web API system that I put together, which is publicly available, and supports API calls in XML, JSON, PHP dumps, and Tables. You can have a look at that or see some sample API calls here.

Thanks to Scott over at RA for his help and support, and Draco for his header logo I used in this app.

If you want to give it a run, download it from here.

[hansolo77]

Woot Woot!! I'll see if I get some free time tomorrow to give this a whirl. I really love the idea, and can't wait to get it all working.

Are you still planning on eventually incorporating everything so it works fluidly from GameEx without having to use the Launcher as a means to LAUNCH the select system/rom?

[Adultery]

I'm planning on a core version, but not until after I finish up the gui.

This won't accept commands like that will, and it won't need internet connectivity to work. I'm gonna do the keymapper support for this before I start that though.

[KRC]

Nice Work Adultery, This is one of my favorites

[nullPointer]

Thanks to much Adultery! I'm really looking forward to trying this out. What an achievement!

[CharlesLam]

this looks promising. i am anxious to try it out.